What appears renewed — the feverfew are close to the ground, laid out as doilies — seems only to result in ruin: black seed casingsrubbed between my fingers, crunch, fallto spread, making white daisies with egg-yolk-yellow centers. What appearsto be death leads towards renewal, wanting its turn, contemplating the next chapter.

Martin Willitts Jr. won the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award and the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015 Editor’s Choice. He has over 20 chapbooks including the winner of the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 11 full-length collections including Dylan Thomas and the Writing Shed (FutureCycle Press, 2017).